


Revenant

by rabidsamfan



Series: hauntings [2]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-19
Updated: 2009-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-04 15:26:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabidsamfan/pseuds/rabidsamfan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The morning after <i>Haunted</i>, Surgeon Major Preston comes to see Watson, and his future hangs in the balance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Revenant

**But sorrow return'd with the dawning of morn,  
And the voice in my dreaming ear melted away. **  
\-- _The Soldier's Dream_ \-- Thomas Campbell (1777-1844)

\---

I woke to find myself tucked up in bed wearing a threadbare nightshirt which fit badly, a half empty carafe of water and a glass on the bedtable beside me and a stiff, dry, fever rag fallen to the pillow next my head. My left arm had been immobilized, much to my dismay, and I could smell the sour miasma of illness in the modest room and taste the bitter dregs of laudanum in the crevices of my teeth. My head was thick with drugs and nightmares, and for the longest time I could not place myself in space or time. Against the windowpane the rain was splashing, and a blink of lightning heralded more of the thunder that had set my pulse to thrumming like the wings of a startled hummingbird.

"Mrs. Hudson!" The familiar cry from below echoed up through the floor ventilator and told me I was in London. "Mrs. Hudson, have you seen... ah, there it is!"

Baker Street then, but when? Winter? Spring? My eyes picked out strange faces and distorted creatures in the patterns of the wallpaper as I tried to work out which memories were real. I'd had a relapse, that was clear enough, and God only knew how much of myself I'd lost to the fever this time. But why? Surely the nightmare of fresh hours spent in darkness and despair could not be true.

"He was still asleep, last time I looked." Holmes' voice, and closer, and two sets of footfalls on the stairs. "But he's been much cooler since the weather broke."

"So have we all," said the second voice, which was all the warning I had before my old commander stepped through the door.

I tried to sit up, in spite of myself, and was pleasantly surprised when I nearly managed it. Surgeon-Major Preston quickly came to my rescue, adjusting the pillows so that I could rest propped up to face him. "Hoy, there, Watson," he chided me cheerfully. "You've overdone enough for now, don't you think?"

He was in uniform and looked much the same as he had when I was first his patient at Khushk-i-Nakud in February of '79. Thinner perhaps, and paler, but blessedly free of the blood that had soaked through his clothing in the sweltering chaos of Maiwand when he had briefly been my patient in his turn. Still his appearance seemed somehow odd to my laggard comprehension. "Overdone?" I echoed, hoping I might yet find firm ground.

He lay a hand on my forehead and studied my eyes. "Too much, too soon," he confirmed. "From what Mr. Holmes tells me you were working yourself towards a collapse even before that mess at Gower street."

"The trains!" It wasn't a nightmare, or a delusion brought on by drugs and fever. The realization would have had me out of the bed if it weren't for Preston's hand on my good shoulder . "Did we find them? Did we get them all out?"

"You did, Doctor," Holmes said, displaying a newspaper from his station in the doorway. He spread it out so that I could see the headlines. _ Seventeen dead, dozens injured in underground collision. Praise for the swift actions of the Metropolitan police and passersby. _ "The surviving engine driver was the last person brought out, and that was more than an hour before you came home."

"Seventeen?" I frowned. It seemed to me that there had been more, but I had learned the hard way to distrust any memory that was tangled with fever dreams.

"More have died of their injuries since, of course," Preston said matter-of-factly. "Does that fragment in your leg give you any trouble?" he asked, laying a gentle hand over the scar near my ankle which marked my disastrous introduction to the dangers of the Afghan campaign.*

"Only when it rains," Holmes offered, when I failed to answer. My mind was elsewhere, and not to be distracted by aches to which I had grown accustomed over the past two years.

"More died, you say?" I asked anxiously.

"Eight, I believe, at last count," Preston said as he began to unwind the bandage that held my left shoulder and arm in position. "But the engine driver appears to be doing well, even without his legs. They revised the left amputation to above the knee, but I'm told you did as decent a job as might be expected in cramped quarters and bad light with the right leg."

"There was a youngster who helped me with the right," I explained, the flitting memories of dirty faces by candlelight settling for a moment on a single countenance. "A bobby... James, I think he said his name was."

Holmes brightened. "Ah, that might explain why the _Telegraph_ had you named as James Dodson. I notified them of the error, of course."

"Which is what brought me into it." Preston had the bandage away and he reached inside the opening of my shirt to prod at my shoulder. "Does that hurt?"

I bit down on the answer I would have preferred to give. "Yes." If I kept my eyes closed for a moment the sudden heat in them would fade. But the pain was not nearly as bad as it could be, once the initial surprise at his touch passed. "It's stiff from disuse," I decided, unwilling to concede more damage than I must.

Preston nodded. "Try raising your arm."

I could do that, if I went carefully and didn't venture too far. "What did I do to it this time?" I asked.

Holmes answered, an odd note in his voice. "You fell off the settee. Don't you remember?"

"No." Nothing like that. And what little I did remember seemed an idle fantasy, far more unlikely than the nightmare of the train accident. "Whyever was I on the settee?"

A faint spot of color showed itself on my fellow-lodger's cheekbones. "I thought it would be easier to keep an eye on you if you were in the sitting room," he said. "But I became absorbed in trying to determine the cause of each of the stains on your suit -- purely as an academic exercise, you understand -- and failed to notice when you grew restless."

"Holmes," I began, meaning to ask how long ago that had been, but I had no chance. Instead I gave a cry of pain as Preston tried to push my arm higher than the level of my shoulder. "Ah! No! It won't go that far."

"Sorry, John. Rotate the arm for me, as far as it will go in each direction without pain." I felt a chill when Preston used my Christian name. He almost never did that except when he was going to give the patient a diagnosis they'd not want to hear.

Still, _pain_, he'd said, and not discomfort. Setting my jaw to keep from making another sound, I did as I'd been told. I could bring my arm inward across the front of my chest all right, as long as I kept it low, and raise it in front or to the side straight out with only a bit of wobbling. But much higher than that, or back behind it would not go, not for all my trying. I had to give up and stop to breathe. "I must have bruised it," I gasped.

Preston shook his head, his eyes kind, but unyielding. "Did you have much more range of movement before?" he asked.

"A little." But my own eyes fell. I watched my right hand trying to knead the ache out of my left feeling as if neither quite belonged to me. "A few degrees more in front, perhaps. Enough for most things."

"But not for everything."

I knew what he was trying to say. "I managed well enough in the Underground," I protested.

Preston snorted. "Several of the fractures needed to be reset, two of the dislocations weren't reduced correctly, your splint bandaging was uneven, and the sutures on those amputations looked like they were done by a drunken monkey," he enumerated mercilessly, but then his tone softened. "Face it, John, you're not up to doing surgery, not properly. And combined with the collapse, it's clear that you simply aren't able to return to duty."

"They've taken _you_ back," I realized. That was why he was in uniform, even though he'd been wounded the same day as I had. This was an official visit.

"For paperwork," he said. "And teaching. And for giving bad news to men like you who haven't the sense to know that they're still convalescent."

I still didn't want to hear it. "What about the clinic? Surely _they_ didn't think me incompetent."

"But most of that work was medical, not surgical." Preston was relentless. "Lancing an abscess is not the same as the kind of work as you need to be able to do on a battlefield. You know it as well as I do." He touched my good arm and waited until I looked into his face again. "I'm no happier about it than you are, man. You were one of the finest assistants I've ever had -- a good man in a tight spot. But I'd be doing a disservice to you and to the Department if I went back to the board and said you were capable of the work in your present state."

For some reason, I looked to Holmes, as if he were the final court of appeal. But he had slipped away, proving a neat sense of delicacy. He, no doubt, had deduced Preston's intentions long before I had myself. Without him as my bulwark I had no defense. "I could help with the paperwork," I offered.

"You'd hate it even more than I do." Preston smiled ruefully. "You were thrown in headfirst out there, believe me. Peacetime service is nothing like what you're used to."

"It's got to be better than doing nothing," I protested.

"If you'd been doing _nothing_, instead of working yourself into the ground at that plague-ridden clinic and laying yourself open to every wretched fever in London, you might -- and I say only _might_ \-- have been able to fool the board into putting you on light duty," Preston informed me testily. "Very light duty. It isn't the shoulder, John, though you'll have to find a way to work around it if you mean to continue surgery. It's the enteric fever that's the difference between your recovery and mine. I've read the reports -- you were far closer to death in Peshawar than you were on the road to Candahar, you simply weren't in any case to know it. Give yourself a chance to heal. Perhaps next year will be different."

"Another year..." Another idle, useless year and I'd be fit for nothing but sitting by the fire. I said as much, though not in terms which would bear repeating, and to add to my disgrace, I could not keep the tears from flowing. If they had any effect on Preston, it was only to make him adamant. He allowed that I might sleep better without the bandages on my arm, and conceded that the opiates he prescribed were unlikely to be conducive to the kind of weight gain which he thought I should achieve before returning to the service, but insisted nonetheless that I take the dose of salicylic acid powders which he prepared for me.

"I'll have your landlady send up some broth," he promised as he rose and began collecting his things back into his bag. "And I'll recommend to the board that your pension be continued. But for now, rest, and let yourself heal."

No sooner had he gone than I realized that I had missed the opportunity to ask for his assistance with certain necessities. Setting my jaw, I pushed away the thin blankets and swung my legs over the edge of the bed, taking care not to move too quickly. The ceramic convenience was under the bed, but being uncertain of my own condition I disliked the thought of bending over to collect it. I had a memory -- or was it many memories? -- of the sudden vertigo which had sent me to the ground in Peshawar. I tried to ease down to my knees instead. If the rug hadn't slid out from under me the maneuver might have succeeded. As it was I landed harder than I expected, and was still cursing my own incompetence when Holmes appeared, carrying a tray with a bowl.

"Doctor?" he said.

"Don't call me that," I snapped. Preston had put an end to that title, for now, and perhaps for always.

Holmes pulled his head back as if I'd struck him on the nose, but he didn't retreat. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine." I couldn't use my right hand, as it was occupied in keeping me from tipping over entirely, and my left was still tucked tight against my chest in hopes that the pain in my shoulder would ease, so I nodded to the chamberpot blindly. "I just needed to use..."

"Ah. Of course." Holmes set the tray on the dresser and made as if to come to my assistance.

Months of fever in India should have inured me to the indignities of being an invalid, but I found myself mortified by the thought of subjecting my fastidious fellow-lodger to the unpleasant realities of my condition. "I can manage by myself," I cried, shying away from his touch. "Just let me..." My head was spinning, my gorge rising. "Oh, God, Holmes, I think I'm going to be sick."

I have no desire to recount the events of the next several minutes. Leave it to suffice that I did require Holmes' assistance, which I accepted with very bad grace, and that before long I found myself in bed again, shaking with exhaustion, wearing yet another nightshirt that must have come from my poor fellow-lodger's supply.

Holmes was silent as he collected the soiled linens and bundled them together, and his mouth was set in a thin straight line. He was seldom uncertain of himself, but the symptoms were unmistakable, and I knew myself to be the cause. He hadn't bargained on playing nursemaid when we'd agreed to share lodgings!

"I'm sorry," I said wretchedly. "But if you can tolerate me for a few more days -- until I've the means to shift to new quarters..." I'd need somewhere smaller -- and cheaper -- if circumstances required me to hire any kind of caretaker, but better that than returning to a hospital ward.

"Tolerate you?" Holmes said, smiling at me. "My dear fellow, I'm the one who engages in malodorous chemical experiments before breakfast." But then his smile faltered and he turned to wash his hands at the basin. "Or is that why you wish to go?"

"No. But I..." I tried to find the right words to explain. Without the Army, or any real chance of returning to work at the clinics I knew myself to be as unwelcome as the gift of a white elephant. "It's just... I don't intend to be a burden to anyone but myself."

His brow cleared, although he still did not look up. "I can assure you that it is not your presence which I would find burdensome, but your absence. Baker Street has suited me and my work very well indeed, and I should prefer not to remove to other quarters. I would find it equally distasteful to discover myself once again forced to choose between my tobacco and the rent."

"You knew I was facing a medical review. You must have planned to find another man to take my place had I passed the examination," I said.

"I did," Holmes agreed, drying his hands meticulously. "But I had come to the conclusion that the process would be lengthy. And an indefinite period of being obliged to produce the entire sum would almost certainly prove to be... inconvenient."

"And expensive," I said, grudgingly glad to know that while _I_ might not be worth salvaging, my wound pension would still earn me a welcome.

Holmes flushed to the tips of his ears. "Ah. You do remember then." _Remember?_ I stared as he faced me and gave a stiff, uncomfortable nod. "I apologize. It was an unconscionable liberty on my part."

"An unconscionable… Wait! Holmes!" I cried, for he had turned to leave, and I could not stand to spend the rest of my life wondering whether or not the dream I'd had of cool water and a warm embrace was more than just a dream. "I'm not sure I do remember. The laudanum -- it makes it hard to sort things out. But I have no memory of being offended. Nor of being offended against. Not by you." I felt my own ears heating. "Only kindness." I studied the counterpane, wishing I dared to be more forthright. It was not a matter of virginal coyness -- I'd often found recourse to the inconvenience and expense of the ladies of the evening, with Daniel at first, and on my own after he'd been posted to India -- and there had been more than one soul in Afghanistan willing to undertake a passage at arms with me to stave off grief or fear. But no one since Maiwand. Not since bullet and fever had broken me. Still, if Holmes had, by some strange miracle, found the ruin of my body worthy of attention then perhaps he might forgive me all the trouble I was causing him. But I could not say so, not in those words. And I could scarcely confess, even to myself, that I was so desperate to be useful that I would willingly consent to being used. "Do you ever need better dreams?" I asked, barely above a whisper.

"No," he said, and I closed my eyes, the ashes of even that small hope bitter on my lips. But then I felt his weight settle on the bed beside my legs. I looked up and found him pale, but far more composed. "I almost never remember the dreams I have while I'm asleep," he said, and a small smile flittered across his face. "A circumstance for which I find myself glad, of late. Yours sound terrible."

"They are," I admitted. Although knowing that he could find something to smile about gave me some ease, I was still uncertain of my position – and I had yet another factor to add to the score. "I hope I wasn't so loud as to disturb you."

"Not at all, my dear fellow." Holmes kept fidgeting, plucking bits of dust and clumps of fiber from the worn places on the covers. "Dr. Ferguson thought that the laudanum would ameliorate them, despite the fever, but all it seemed to do was make you think you were in India again." Again that glint of amusement. "I had to hunt out my dictionary of Hindustani to be certain of what you were asking for."

"Oh, good God," I said, unable to see any humor in having discommoded him so greatly. "I'm sorry. I'll find some way to recompense you for your lost time."

"I had nothing better to do," he said.

"Your clients..." I began, and he laughed merrily.

"What clients? Watson, it was only yesterday morning you fell ill!"

"Then why am I so weak?" I snarled, overwhelmed by a fresh wave of unruly emotion by his unseemly glee.

"Because you've hardly eaten," Holmes answered promptly. "Fergusen thought you'd do less damage to your shoulder if you were too heavily sedated to move about, but it's made getting anything more than sips of lemon water into you very complicated."

"Fergusen is an antiquated idiot," I growled, glad to find another target for my anger. "I _hate_ being so far under that I can't make myself wake up."

"I'll make a note of that," Holmes said, still irrepressibly amused. "But given that you're awake now, would you like some of the broth Mrs. Hudson sent up?"

"It won't stay down," I protested.

"It might."

"And if it doesn't? Don't tell me you're going to want to clean up after me all over again."

"A temporary inconvenience," Holmes said gaily, dismissing the possibility with a wave. He was practically dancing as he got up to collect the tray from the dresser, his gangling long limbs seeming all the longer, and his face alight as it had been the moment I first met him. A wave of jealousy passed over me as I watched him move with all the strength and vitality of youth that would never be mine again.

"Temporary?! Holmes, the last time I developed a fever I was derelict for months!" Exasperated beyond discretion by his demeanor, I began to enumerate the difficulties he did not seem to see. "The Army won't have me back; I botched the work I did at Gower Street; and all I appear to have accomplished at the clinic is to expose myself to more pathogens than what little health I still possessed can withstand. God knows when I'll manage to get out of this blasted bed."

"Well, you've certainly managed to sit up under your own power," Holmes observed blithely. "Hold still a moment." He balanced the tray on one hand while he used the other to position the pillows to support me. "That will do nicely."

I sank back against them, still glaring at my unpredictable companion. "Holmes..." I began, but he over-rode me masterfully.

"If you don't drink some of this for me, Mrs. Hudson will be up to pour it down your throat," he warned me. "Just take it slowly, a little at a time, and you can stop if you begin to feel uncertain. Here. Careful now." He settled beside me once more and put the pewter invalid cup into my good hand. "I realize," he went on, as I forced myself to take the first sip, "that I must seem ridiculously pleased with your misfortune, but you must grant me some allowance for relief."

"I can't see that you have anything to be relieved about," I grumbled as he rested his hand against mine to steady it. His hand was warmer than the broth, and infinitely more comforting.

"Oh, but I do." For a moment I saw again that flare of uncertainty cross his features, but he hid it again quickly beneath the mask of lecturing logician. "You see, when you came home the other night, or to be precise, so very early the other morning, I indulged my curiosity, thinking that I might never have another opportunity to do so. I had convinced myself that it would not matter whether or not I destroyed your good opinion of me -- your tenure in these rooms was coming to an end in any case, and you would soon be back with the Army. It was not a rational conclusion."

"And you pride yourself on your ratiocination," I said. Proximity showed me the fine lines worn into Holmes' face and the shadows under his eyes, and I knew that he was all too likely correct in assigning his joy to relief, for I had seen men shed years at the relief of the siege of Candahar. There is a certain giddiness one reaches at the end of exhaustion, and that I could forgive, no matter how irritating it was to my disconsolation. Then, too, the gleam in his grey eyes was inviting me to enjoy the mantle of professorial expertise he had so blatantly adopted, and I could not help but respond to that cajolery.

"Under normal circumstances it is my most salient asset," he said dryly, steepling his forefingers and bringing them up to tap restlessly against his lips for a moment as he chose his next words. " But by giving in to impulse I committed myself to three presuppositions which I realized afterwards were groundless. The first lay in assuming that you would have no difficulty in returning to the Army. Obviously, that was an error. Although had you not fallen ill, I suspect that the theory might still hold some validity. I am not a military man, as you well know, and stories of officers who have gone on to greatness lacking an arm or a leg or an eye have led me to believe that the physical criteria must not be strictly enforced. But perhaps that has changed since Nelson's day?"

"Very likely," I said, equally dryly, and forbore to point out that Nelson had been a genius -- and a Navy man -- whereas I was neither. "What was your second supposition?"

"The second, fortunately, appears to be correct, although it could easily have been just as erroneous as the first. I was assuming that you would not disgusted by any indication of depravity on my part." I opened my mouth to protest, but he waved me silent. "No, it was an unwarranted assumption. I did not act without some previous consideration of the matter, of course. My initial observations had established that the risk of taking action was not unreasonably large. Despite your clear delight in the variations of the female form, I had seen several small indications that you were not unaware of the attractions of our own sex. Your background as a public schoolboy and a military man as well as a medical doctor led me to believe that you would be informed as to what those attractions might be in general. And your observations of my own person over the past several months lent some credence to the notion that you might not find me objectionable in the specific, although I discounted much of that last conclusion on the grounds that you had had few other subjects to study. But I could have mistaken your convalescent objection to rows for tolerance, and worse, the assumption carried a dangerous corollary, for you might have felt obligated to report me to the authorities. I have no doubt whatsoever that you would not hesitate to fulfill your responsibilities if you thought it necessary."

"It would hardly be necessary," I told him, torn between amusement at his pedantry and amazement that he had discerned so much about my more prurient interests despite my silence on the subject. "Had I raised any serious objection you would not have persisted."

"You made several objections to my presence while you were delirious," he said, suddenly somber. "Not by name, but you were quite vehement. Had you not been equally distressed by Dr. Fergusen and Mrs. Hudson I might have withdrawn entirely in favor of the nurse that Fergusen suggested, however exorbitant the fee. By staying I could hardly make things worse, however, and I felt a certain responsibility, since if I had brought you to your own bed instead of the settee, you might not have fallen on your shoulder."

"It wouldn't have been a simple matter to maneuver me up the stairs," I said. Regret was not an emotion I associated with Holmes, and I had no wish to see him fall back into a black mood. Not when he had been acting in my best interests! "The settee was the logical choice."

"It wasn't much simpler getting you to the settee," Holmes agreed. "I suppose I could have brought you to my own bed," he added, with a lightning smile. "But it was full of papers. I'd been sorting them while I was waiting. In any case, it became clear within the hour that you did not recognize your surroundings, much less me." He took the half-empty cup I had abandoned and set it aside. "Forgive me for mentioning it, but I cannot think that they treated you well at Peshawar."

"Most of them did," I sighed, and allowed Holmes to help me ease back into a more restful position on the bed. The nightmares had been the worst of the enteric fever, but I had no doubt that some of the memories I had of that unhappy period were genuine. Just thinking of them made me feel worse. "But a few of the European orderlies saw that I had been shot in the back during the worst rout in recent memory and drew the obvious conclusion."

"That you'd been surrounded by the enemy?" Holmes said, with a raised eyebrow.

"That I'm a coward." My despair began to reassert itself, for there was no denying that when the nightmares had me in their grip I felt utterly craven, but Holmes would have none of it.

"A coward would have walked _away_ from Gower street," he said vehemently, and then sat back and struck himself on the forehead with an open palm. "I forgot! Here!" He began to tug letters and telegrams out of various pockets, a few of them neatly folded, but more looking as if they'd been thrust away between moments of distraction. "These are for you. They've been coming by every post."

"What on earth?" I fumbled to catch the bits of paper. My correspondence consisted of invoices from my chemist and the bookseller, and rare messages from the Army, little more. But here were notes in a dozen hands. I unfolded one of the telegrams. "'Pleased to inform you that little Tommy is doing well'." I read. " 'Many thanks for your kindness. Harrison.' Who the devil is Harrison?"

"The father of one of your younger patients," Holmes deduced. "From the train, presumably, since the clientele from the clinic would not be likely to invest in a wire. Although I think that these two may be from some of your patients there." He held up two grubby envelopes of cheap paper, addressed in the block printing of the barely literate. "May I?"

"Please," I answered. Even the copperplate of the telegram had been an effort to read.

"'Dear Doctor Watson, they tell us you are sick of being at the trains when they crashed and will not come back soon so I am writing to say thank you for the orange and I am keeping my toe clean it is better now and it don't hurt as much but I want to show you again. Jim.' Another patient, and not one who has been initiated into the use of full stops." Holmes opened the next envelope and squinted at the note within. "More gratitude, I see, from a Mrs...Collins? Collier? Jenny has cut her tooth and the fever is gone, and if you need any mending done do not forget she will do it for you. I wonder what Jenny's father will make of that offer."

I remembered Jenny and her poor frantic mother, who had been discarded by an indigent family and was therefore cut off from the feminine advice which would have eased her concerns over the minor illnesses of her first child. The father was apprentice to a costermonger, orphaned in the more usual way, and equally uncertain about how well he was providing for the first addition to the family. When I closed my eyes I could see him again, turning his cap endlessly in his hands while I made my examination of their fine fat fussing baby. "He suggested the bargain. Doesn't like to be beholden to anyone."

"Maybe I should send her what remains of your suit, then," Holmes said. I heard the crinkle of another envelope. "This fellow was on the train, he says, and is wondering if you have any notion what became of his pocketbook. It no doubt vanished to the same place as yours did." More paper, rustling, "This is better. 'Dear Doctor, I wish to thank you for your prompt action in aiding my son at the Gower Street station accident. His injuries are still quite painful, but my own physician reassures us that he will make a complete recovery in time, and attributes that to you. Enclosed please find my cheque for services rendered." Holmes gave a low whistle. "I had no idea you were so expensive a practitioner, Watson."

That reminded me, unfortunately, of Preston's admonition. "I'm not a practitioner at all," I sulked. "Not now. Major Preston all but ordered me to give it up."

I felt the feathertouch of his fingertips at my hairline, soothing back a few strands that had gone astray. But by the time I opened my eyes he'd sat back again, and was collecting the stray missives into a neat pile. "I do hope it's only a temporary hiatus," he said, watching his own hands as they flattened telegrams and smoothed out creases. The acid stains of his experiments had faded somewhat and there were far fewer sticking plasters on those long hands than I had come to think of as normal, informing me of the degree to which he had sacrificed his researches to his black mood and my illness. "I've come to think that it might be convenient to have a resident physician about the place."

I knit my forehead, trying to think if I had noticed any symptoms in him which might require treatment. "Why is that?"

"I suffer from an occasional affliction," he said with a studied neutrality. "A swelling." For a moment the grey eyes flashed up to meet mine, but then they fell again and he went on. "Oh, it's a minor matter -- more a distraction than an impediment. I have an ointment which, in combination with vigorous massage, readily corrects the condition. But I conducted a few experiments while I was at University, and discovered that the remedy is far more efficacious when it is applied by hands other than my own."

A more diffident and offhand proposition I could not imagine, but the sincerity of it was made clear by the faint blush which was creeping up my fellow lodger's ears. For a long moment I watched that unlikely phenomenon, and the rataplan of rain against the panes was the only sound between us. Everything stilled, even Holmes's hands, as I sought words. I wanted, more than anything, to match his insouciance, to meet his lightheartedness with the delight and joy which it deserved. But I'm afraid my voice cracked when I said, "I should be grateful to think my anatomical studies might still be of some use."

Again his eyes met mine, and there was such desire in their dark depths as made my heart stutter within my chest. "I have every confidence in your skills, Doctor," he growled, as if forbidding me to demur. For a moment his cool right hand encircled mine, and then he frowned and reached up to test my cheek and forehead. "You're getting warm," he said, passion replaced immediately with concern.

"Not just from fever, I assure you!" I ejaculated and caught at his sleeve as he started to rise, meaning to tell him that I wanted him just as much as he appeared to want me. "Holmes -- " But I could not bring myself to be blunt, not even after so unmistakable a declaration of intentions as we had just made. "I'll be all right," I finished lamely.

Holmes smiled. "I have every confidence in that, too." But he did not come back to the bed. Instead he busied himself with preparing a dilution of phosphoric acid according to the prescription Preston had left behind, and when I had managed that draught, offered me a dose of Fergusen's laudanum to follow it. "I know you don't like it, but it should be easier on your stomach than the salicylic acid. I'll undertake to waken you if you seem to be dreaming badly, and I doubt you'll sleep without something to ease that shoulder."

"I'm used to the shoulder," I told him. "And you need sleep as much as I do. Especially if you're going to be saddled with me for another year." But I took the laudanum anyway, because it would be too much work to argue further, and sleep would make the long hours of being bedridden again pass faster than staring at the ceiling. I told Holmes that, and he chuckled as he settled the pillows and sheets around me.

"Indolence suits you no better than it does me," he observed. "Although I doubt you'll be bedridden for long. Very well, we'll think of a nice quiet occupation to fill your hours. How about indexing medical works for the _Lancet_? Their pleas for someone to do the job are beginning to look quite plaintive, and as they must supply the monographs it would enable you to keep up with your profession at little or no cost."

I'd seen the advertisement, printed on the back of each issue of the magazine for the past several months; although the nominal pay attached to the tedious task was inadequate, Holmes had a point about the expense that would be saved if I did not have to purchase medical monographs out of my own pocket. And it would be useful work, as I well knew. _Necessary_ work. With so many discoveries and theories being published in the medical field it was impossible for even a conscientious man to keep entirely up to date on every advance. Sometimes there would need to be research done, and good indexes would facilitate that.** "I can try it, certainly," I said, for the elegance of Holmes's suggestion appealed to me. "It's not as if there's much else I can do while I'm in bed."

"I can think of several things," Holmes muttered. "But they'll have to wait until you aren't contagious."

That surprised a bark of laughter from me. And then I think I must have let the laudanum take mastery of my tongue for when Holmes's reddened I informed him that I would be able to do a great deal more once I was capable of rising. It was just the sort of thing that Daniel would have said to me, and I would swear that I heard the echo of his laughter as well as Holmes's and my own. If it was a fever-born hallucination it was kinder than the rest, for it came with the certainty that Daniel would approve of my sharing the jokes and adolescent witticisms we had devised with this new friend. When I had breath enough again, I embarked upon an even more regrettable pun, and watched with sleepy satisfaction as Holmes collapsed onto the window ledge whilst attempting to regain his composure. When he forgot his pretensions like this he seemed much younger, but how differently I looked upon that youth now than I had not fifteen minutes before. With his hair falling over his forehead and a lingering smile upon his face he looked very much the boy and not the self-possessed man I had begun to know.

"Good heavens!" he exclaimed, when he had calmed himself. "You do have hidden depths, don't you, Doctor?"

Daniel's memory whispered to me that I'd no doubt enjoy having Holmes plumb them, but that was a length to which I had ventured but twice, and never sober, and I did not share the insight with my fellow lodger. I was chary of introducing notions which would daunt either of us; there would be time and enough to discover the extent of his experience and desires. At the moment I could safely hope that Holmes would attribute the flush on my face to the fever. Besides, I was growing somnolent. I thanked him, instead, and asked if he might help me take another drink of water.

He did so with alacrity, spurning the invalid cup which would have allowed me to remain prone in favor of sitting on the bed to prop me up against his chest as I sipped from the glass. Now I could be sure that the memory of him doing much the same thing in the bath was a true one. Now I could enjoy his wiry strength and shift a little to keep our bones from banging uncomfortably. I could even savor that mild discomfort since it proved I was not creating a fantasy entire from heat and air and loneliness. I felt him yawn.

"You should sleep," I told him. "And so should I."

"We should. And separately too, worse luck. I don't want to give Dr. Fergusen a second patient." But his hands were reluctant to give me up. Even once I was settled again he stayed beside me, soothing the creases from the sheet and my nightshirt and refreshing the fever rag he laid upon my brow. I wanted to watch his face, but I could not keep my eyes open.

"Holmes," I said, for I would not have him leave until I was truly asleep. "You said there were three presuppositions. But you've only told me about two of them. What was the third?"  
"Do you really want to know?" he asked, softly.

"Yes."

"The third was the most unforgivable of the three," he warned me, gently, as he used his handkerchief to divert the trickle of water from the fever rag that would otherwise have run into my ear. "In the first instance, I mistook the Army. In the second I might have mistaken you. But in this last case, I made a far more elementary error. You recall that I said that I thought it would not matter if I lost your good opinion, yes?"

I murmured my assent.

His voice was growing even quieter, but his hand was resting against my arm, his fingertips at the pulsepoint in my wrist. "Barring the unlikelihood of public condemnation -- which I never truly believed in, despite the vituperation you were pouring on my head while you were out of your own -- the loss of your good opinion would only matter if it mattered to _me._ And that's where I miscalculated."

I could feel my respiration slowing, knew distantly that by all appearances I must be thought to have already slipped into slumber. But Holmes lingered. "There are some benefits to making errors, you know. Having done so once serves as an inoculation against the future. And I really cannot expect to deduce the motivations of others if I fail to properly measure myself." He must have been thinking aloud by then, speaking to himself, for it was beyond my power to respond. For all I know I may have dreamt his last words, or the comfort of being tucked in like a small child.

"So I must thank you, my dear Watson, for upending all my notions. I can no longer take it as axiomatic that when it comes to the opinions of my fellow man -- or at least the opinions of my fellow lodger -- I do not care. Clearly," he said, from somewhere beyond my reach, "I do."

 

 

 

*This narrative seems to indicate that Watson was wounded on two separate occasions in Afghanistan, once soon after his arrival during the skirmish at Khusk-i-Nakud and again more severely at Maiwand.  
**Watson's familiarity with Percy Trevelyan's monograph on obscure nervous lesions may have sprung from his work for the Lancet.

**Author's Note:**

> beta thanks to janeturenne, clevertoad and belegcuthalion


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